i listen to your love beads glisten in the flotsam of my room-
we make them from samurai sword folds at forge and loom in the mess of thrown off clothes.
so many smoke me kisses at portal doors, and mithril wishes on primitive floors-
take us back again through heath and fen to imitate lost landscape-
cycle and circle sky and stone outside and home-
in love in less with your heavenliness, and loneliness durable under duress.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate, and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal (lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com). A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry (stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com) reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including Poppy Road Review, The Galway Review, The Huffington Post USA, The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Lampeter Review, Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine, and Dissident Voice.
Thankye Editor Barbara Leonhard for publishing my poem The Ascent of Money on MasticadoresUSA on 17th June 2025 . I appreciate your awesome support of poets and poetry.
the stars are those we have forgotten both living and dead, floating in clustered constellations not labouring in rows- with hair growing grey and teeth going rotten singing songs, God's godless pray. harvesting crops. chants drowned in clocks of tobacco and cotton, the peasants and slaves of civilised nations duped by liberty in recent history- dug out canals, made railways and roads out of tarmac to tread- into factories like tribal junkies hooked on cheap gin and beer instead of joining the cholera's watery dead- ten to a room in a slum and lead- like human batteries, sleeping without moonlight on sarsen stones, or druid voices in their homes- where thoughts have no dreams or flight, just sleep, recharge, get bled. you have to be poor, to think utopia can be something real- not to exploit or steal that ambrosia aura of women and children and men for the spoken wages of despair- that suck you in, glad but grim when times' clock punches that card by the door and mass myopia conditions all to labour, keyboard and pen for food and shelter with a roof and fourth wall shanty made out of cardboard, wood and tin in sunny Sao Paolo, where the samba rain leaks in while orphaned children beg and play eating the forage of capitalist waste dodging death squads night and day imitating Socrates at football to hope to taste what's inside the cold, glistening towers casting invisible powers behind the smoked glass and soldiers of stone leaving blood and bleached bone from over there- where the ascent of money doesn't care about it all because its infinity is small.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal
A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have my revolutionary poem Water and Mist published on Latinos USA - English Edition 16th June 2025. My thanks to awesome editor Barbara Leonhard.
let the world do what it does, and when the desert comes for us we will be water- so the seeds of new ideas can replace the wars and fears of decadent thrones spying on the homes of those they slaughter.
bring on the peoples revolution, that returns our stolen land into our hands from these swollen fat cats, with their final solution and fascist FEMA plans.
let the world do what it does, and when the guns are turned on us we will be mist- eclipsing everything they’ve done when we resist.
strike them like ghosts in the halls of their hosts, topple their temples of sin- dissolve all their banks, then their missiles and tanks, leave no corrupted survivor- cleanse what’s within for a new way to begin by severing each head from this hydra.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Thanks to Editor Agron Shele for publishing my 5 poems in the superb Atunis Poetry.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/.
A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
ELSEWHERE, IN ANOTHER PLACE
There’s an evening coming in, Like wet towels With heavy jowls, To snoop, and listen in.
Walking under it, Intimate in touch and face; Our mood moves with it, Elsewhere, in another place.
Thoughts cascade like rainbows, As words said, reach the sky; Love touches love, and knows- Sometimes, there is no why.
Beyond this moment, who can say- What is meant to be: In the hot rain, boughs beckon and sway- Uncontrollably.
SEPARATE PIECES
follow me down the fathoms of forgiveness like ghosts who heal and hope- to that room in the mind where contentment resonates with longing for love to fill its vacant chair and mould it to us both.
i can’t go on like separate pieces, that move around each other but never touch in their courtship on the board- and yet, so many things you say and do, won’t go away and fill me still, with points of possibility as the Great Wheel of Time revolves in harmony and confusion.
unconscious moments, call out to chance and circumstance and weave away in dreams- orchestrating opening gambits, to suture sensual seams. two hands touch and influence fate as they move around the squares; time curves, then unmeasures words- and their endless game goes on.
SO IT GOES
when i look back in a moment of quiet acquired dignity that comes to some with age, it is with patience, for i was much the same when everything seemed bigger than it was as uncertainty wore the other shoe to confidence and followed it step for step.
the energy of youth that often acts without respect and understanding- to bluff and blag its way in fashion and musical rebellion- skips like stones on the ponds of those who have it all from Parliaments revolution- but their ripples wane through treacled trends in this dumbed down democracy soothed by drugs and drink.
apathy watches and laughs at these new roundheads and royals- jigging their booty to tunes composed by capitalist cavaliers- wearing each despotic Emperor’s new clothes, and a known assassins kiss of death waits for anyone who questions-
so it goes.
VELVET TANGERINE
i was drinking tea with Dali in an underworld cafe, arguing down his table on General Franco’s hand- when The Persistence Of Memory that melts my pocket watch made time less rigid- so i fell with names and numbers into old obsidian dreams- where your long legs pointed from six to twelve, then nine to three when you bent them- for me to play and pleasure each exotic segment of your velvet tangerine. Dali left the table to meet Picasso in Paris, while my benzedrine mind replaced- the soft and spent infinity of your face.
DOUBTS AND DEMONS
We all have doubts and demons About ourselves and life; But overcome their reasons And love will conquer strife.
We all want perfections hum, In a real and abstract way; But our flaws make us human And their judgment turns us grey.
Yet, to love and be loved in kind, Transcends this clouded plain, And calms chaos in the mind To co-exist, or wane.
Delighted to have my poem Does Her Far Beauty Know published in the International Times Magazine on 7th June 2025. My thanks to the editors and Nick Victor for his superb Art.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice..
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have these six poems published by the sublime Ultramarine Review in Chile on 2oth May 2025. Superb website with excellent content. My thanks to the editors.
some soul exposed open closed looked at put back where it was because
because it was done being in sun unalterably changed randomness rearranged moving on
moving on rising out of what has gone through opaqueless weightless windows shedding clothes.
~~
YOU’RE SO OPEN, BUT SILENT TO YOURSELF
you’re so open, but silent to yourself like messed books lying on a shelf- some unfinished, others read, now in someone else’s head.
reason meets reluctance to be heard by what is fascist and absurd, so walk through wind wild grass and outlaw canyon pass-
touch the rainbows in the rocks time beyond our conflicts clocks in shaman trance understand truth transcends books banned
and all the lands stolen through greed swollen- return when nature’s fate destroys hubris and hate-
so be gone a while belief in a smile.
~~
LOOKING IN LOVE’S GLASS
looking in love’s glass at what we have drank and haven’t drunk to quench our thirst slow and fast not the first not the last- beauty is flesh is your womanliness and i find your mind grows branches into mine we climb- so compatible and indelible, to others forgettable crashed dream on screen- we know we go out of scene
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; International Times Magazine; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
rich man and peasant understand coins change hand, despite the Magna Carta we must all barter to live-
only communists give nothing something sometimes- same crimes.
so, when reason rains, i drag my convict chains to the barrow bog and cut peat in feral fog where motives meet.
six feet down, sucked back five thousand years the old town settlement appears in full formation of chattel, cattle and battle still at station preserved to serve.
around the round late night fires, power plays and lust desires hearth home homogenous in Mars and Venus making love in animal skins wearing the same sins.
on the long walk home, some alone and those together, believe never can be changed and are called strange.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
A member of The Poetry Society, his five publishedbooks of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have my poem The Cup published by editor Barbara Leonhard in Masticadores USA.
a smelted celebration of victory and carnal coronation moulded in dark history- the chalice divine to inhuman crime blessing unjust law and futile war.
mine, holds the coffee i pour into me, or sometimes tea when i want to see who are different in the present.
upturning the cup and turning it such to read the leaves- a gypsy's lore and ancient blood has always understood-
who and what controls the plot, keeps us in the base and dregs looking up, without the legs to climb the slippery clay into dark deceit counterfeit deception and decay.
take back how to think, stand at your own sink and wash away this cold custodian, old Eton and Bostonian suited slick affray-
of corporate hoodies and big house bullies hunting and shooting laughing and looting, smeared in oils that anoint herding us to the vanishing point.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
it’s so quiet our eloquent words dying on a diet of midnight toast with Orwell’s ghost- looking so tubercular in a tweed jacket pencilling notes on a lung black cigarette packet- our Winston, wronged for a woman and sin rewrote history on scrolls thought down tubes that came to him in the Ministry of Truth Of Fools where conscience learns to lie within. not like today the smug-sly haves say and look away so sure there’s nothing wrong with wanting more, or drown their sorrows downing bootleg gin knowing tomorrows truth is paper thin . at home in sensory perception with tapped and tracked phone the Thought Police arrest me in the corridors of affection- where dictators wear, red then blue, reversible coats in collapsing houses, all self-made and self-paid smarmy scrotes- now the Round Table of real red politics is only fable on the pyre of ghostly heretics. they are rubbing out all the contusions and solitary doubt, with confusions and illusions through wired media defined in their secret encyclopaedia- where summit and boardroom and conclave engineer us from birth to grave. like the birds, i will have to eat the firethorn berries that ripen but sleep to keep the words of revolution alive and warm this winter, with resolution gathering us, to its lantern in the bleak, to be reborn and speak out the strip-malls and old powder shops. The grass grows Five feet tall but only once. Then it’s sheared for the coyotes’ Convenience. Rabbits hide as long as they can, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: Don’t linger.
THE HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT
a lonely man, cigarette, rain and music is a poem moving, not knowing- a caravan, whose journey does not expect to go back and explain how everyone’s ruts have the same blood and vein.
the head in his fedora hat bows to no one’s grip, brim tilted into the borderless plain so his outlaw wit can confess and remain a storyteller, that hobo fella listening like a barfly for a while and slow-winged butterfly whose smile they can’t close the shutters on or stop talking about when he walks out and is gone.
whisky and tequila and a woman, who loves to feel ya inside and outside her when ya move and live as one, brings you closer in simplistic unmaterialistic grooved muse Babylon.
this is so, when he stands with hopes head, arms and legs all aflow in her Galadriel glow with mithril breath kisses condensing sensed wishes of reality and dream felt and seen under that fedora hat inhaling smoke as he sang and spoke stranger fella storyteller.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
so lost schooled- but not a fool, stands in cold sunshine on golden heath where no kings rule and ancestors of cottons thief, make poor ends meet for dirty dime- trapped in manufactured time. he sits and fits in the shadows of its shades and lines on Cribden hill- where clouds spill like wire brillowed blinds, imagining a wintered witch composing pagan spells and rhymes with bones like martyred blades, whose burned marrow curses industrialists and tokened slaves- to believe a full purse is how life measures made. the trees are gone, and wandering tribes, who worked and gathered everything as one- now live down in gas warmed hives, in settled serfdom’s truths and lies.
Pyramid Prison
by Strider Marcus Jones
in detritus metronomes of human habitation the ghost of Shelley’s imagination questions the elemental, experimental chromosomes and ribosomes of DNA, reverse engineered that suddenly appeared as evolution yesterday.
her monster mirrors dark wells of monsters in our smart selves, the lost humanity and oratory that fills laboratory test tubes with fused imbued genes to dreams of flat forward faster distinction to disaster
and barbarism’s ectopic extinction. this is our pyramid prison, where all souls and proles climb the debased opposite steps of extremism, like Prometheus Unbound, defaced sitting around the crouching sphinx abandoned by missing links.
free masons of money and wars, warp the alter of natural laws, so reason withers and wastelands rust no longer rivers of shared stardust in the equal symphony of spheres in space, filling our ears with subwoofer bass, definitive primitive medieval evil waste.
The Dance
by Strider Marcus Jones
pull the roof off knock the walls down touch the forest climb those mountains and smell the sea again.
watch how life decomposes in death going back to land to reform and be reborn as something and someone else.
there’s no great secret to it all. no need to overthink it through
food and shelter fire and shamans clothes and coupling used to be enough with musicians artists and poets interpreting the dance.
then warriors with armies religions with god and minds buying and selling stole the landscape and changed time. smash the windows break down the doors melt the keys rub evil words from their spells and puncture the lungs of their wheels
before they kidnap you from bed call you dissident hold you without charge wheel you out on a stretcher from waterboard torture for years without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
they are selling the sanctuary we made with our numbers bringing back chains making some of us slaves outside the dance in the five coloured rings making winners and losers holding flags and flames.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA, The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
so open, but so silent to yourself, like missing books messing up a shelf- some unfinished, the others read, somewhere else in someone’s head. reason is reluctant to be heard in conscience corrupt by tyranny blurred- so leave the breaks in moorland grass, and bound unfound where hours don’t turn round inside this glass duplicity and old division of curtained cell instead of prism equal and parallel- go, go without trace into uncovered space revealing your own face.
***
VACANT ROOMS
take my thoughts with you, as I cast them into the ocean, and let the seagulls drown my words, from cliffs where clouds sweep low.
wild, wind-swept spray, spits at time turned rocks, and stands them impotent too- on sands that shift:
like truths, turned false and cut loose, like flesh, that fades on a bone-bleached sky; it hurts to set the past free- and live in vacant rooms.
with no roads on our map of conversation, we began without plan, and climbed, into the branches of imagination, past the twigs and leaves- those apothecaries of lost libation, into houred improvisation-
through its desert wanting rain after years of stasis, in a slow camel train searching for that oasis- with moving dunes and negative runes fending off the grey in a charmed, nomadic way.
happen then, that this cold acoustic tune, met your luteful lagoon of mosaical notes- and the baton moved, as was proved round the wheel with ambient spokes, conducting without rules our forgotten fools.
somehow, go now, through the eye of words, to the heart of this rhythm and the scion of its schism; then home, like migrating birds into separate nests- for now, love rests.
***
SILHOUETTES OF LOVE AND LUST
i love to watch the chocolate slowly melt between your lips of silky liquid felt, then lick and lap soft suck sips in rhythm with your hips, making such moments of motion plough tidal waves in your ocean as each surge of storm throbs to be born until the stone and dust of autumn yellow moon casts silhouettes of love and lust that burst and bloom through every love-soaked scented night shuttered from politics so cocooned in plutocracies of blight.
***
PULSATING FLOWERS
so define me now you know the nature of my ways.
understand me somehow, slow- love is more, than what it says:
frequent pulsating flowers, pollening my hands and inky breath; softening, those quiet hours through life and death.
close-ups and downs that fit together, challenging the bounds in bonds that stretch forever:
postures in sounds and elemental words of surprise and wit-
found in tea leaf grounds that make reluctant lovers come to it.
***
OUR TALK
the soft wind, stroking your smiling face, fingers your fine combed hair, in out of place- and i know when you go nothing can make this mood, or give its famine food.
our talk, branching through woods and sky like young leaves, suddenly knowing why- they need the sun again to be, and to remain- more than a copied canopy to reach the plain out to me.
i lounge, in your living words libation, with uncommon nouns, uncovered in creation, and wait for wantings i can be- where complex minds dwell in that simplicity, where feelings go to touch and come to mean so much.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have my poem " The Mess of Thrown-off Clothes" published in the superb Issue 11 of Porch Literary Magazine. Thank you to the Editors and congratulations to all contributors. The Mess of Thrown-off Clothes – Porch Litmag
The Mess of Thrown-off Clothes
by Strider Marcus Jones
i listen to your love beads glisten in the flotsam of my room-
we make them from samurai sword folds at forge and loom in the mess of thrown off clothes.
so many smoke me kisses at portal doors, and mithril wishes on primitive floors-
take us back again through heath and fen to imitate lost landscape-
cycle and circle sky and stone outside and home-
in love in less with your heavenliness, and loneliness durable under duress.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
i listen to your love beads glisten in the flotsam of my room-
we make them from samurai sword folds at forge and loom in the mess of thrown off clothes.
so many smoke me kisses at portal doors, and mithril wishes on primitive floors-
take us back again through heath and fen to imitate lost landscape-
cycle and circle sky and stone outside and home-
in love in less with your heavenliness, and loneliness durable under duress.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have my poem The Door published by brilliant Editor Barbara Leonhard on the fabulous MasticadoresUSA Magazine site today. https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com/2025/02/14/the-door-by-strider-marcus-jones/
it contains conversations confrontations, hiding loves two-ings in lost ruins-
shuts us inside ourself with or without someone else.
we, the un-free, disenfranchised poor have no bowl of more- only pain on the same plain as before, homeless or in shapeless boxes, worked out, hunted, like urban foxes- outlaws on common lands stolen from empty hands.
files on us found from gathering sound where mutations abound put troops on the ground.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have my poem Trapped in Manufactured Time published in The Crossroads Literary Magazine. My thanks to Editor John Patrick Robbins. https://thecrossroadlitmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/trapped-in-manufactured-time-by-strider.html
so lost schooled- but not a fool, stands in cold sunshine on golden heath where no kings rule and ancestors of cottons thief, make poor ends meet for dirty dime- trapped in manufactured time. he sits and fits in the shadows of its shades and lines on Cribden hill- where clouds spill like wire brillowed blinds, imagining a wintered witch composing pagan spells and rhymes with bones like martyred blades, whose burned marrow curses industrialists and tokened slaves- to believe a full purse is how life measures made. the trees are gone, and wandering tribes, who worked and gathered everything as one- now live down in gas warmed hives, in settled serfdom's truths and lies.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
Thanks to Editor Barbara Leonhard for publishing my poem The Other Self latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/t…
the other self abstracted in the press of turned down pages, gets mucked up in the mess and shows how unlaminated age is. if nothing else- these nude notes being played behind the curtain where the stage is, by soloist strings and hermit woodwinds- are far hopes of uncertain opening chords calling out to the duet i haven't come to yet. and afterwards, if all those afterwards could talk and kiss and spout, there would be no more misery move it out.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have six of my poems published in this stunning issue 30 of 100Subtexts Magazine. Congratulations to editor John Hopper and all contributors. 100subtextsmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/100s…
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned
to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask:
where do we come from.
what are we.
where are we going.
FLOATY BOATY
old tracks and elven voices
through the ages clear,
echo those rejoices
then and now, not here.
into the West they went,
leaving behind her music and her scent
in the candle of her moon
and word warmed room
of silver branches-
where streams flow up
and starlight dances
over the cup
of cerebral foreplay
that makes the melancholy mundane day
go floaty boaty
on mental maps
where lips lapped
and tongue tip tapped
forward and back
on moist moaty-
a sensuous place, where conversations dream,
floated in speech bubbles above the scene,
anchored to each mouth and head-
stroking the music rising from the bed.
LOVE IS STRIPPED TO SHARING BREAD
we were kissing
and dancing
to a kitchen song,
talking with our wine
and smoking bong-
then you pushed your pierced pin
of forged fire
further in
the groove of my desire
with your tongue.
later,
up the creaking wooden escalator-
"let me do you" i said
peeling back your petals
with my voice:
love is stripped to sharing bread
abroad-in plain rooms-where Nora and Joyce
reject precious metals.
it brings to craggy green cliffs
that STILL talk-
of two minds, in the sea born mist
of one thought-
why should four legs walk
under clouds adrift.
glum damp rock moss cups
when we go to ground
under body musk
and pagan sound-
the meaning of the hour
when lit lusts flower
fills the air
everywhere
at last
and the future does not imitate the past.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment